During the early decades of Swedish immigration, Chicago served as a gateway to settlement in agricultural areas of the Midwest. Swedish immigrants at this time were families with farming skills hoping to gain land through the American Homestead Act. At the turn of the twentied century an expanding American labor market lured dis-infranchised young Swedish men to the "Industrial Revolution" promising construction and factory jobs in cities such as Chicago. Young Swedish women, destined in rural Sweden to be no more than poorly paid farmworkers, were highly prized as domestic workers in Chicago. Our Swedish ancestors along with a million other young Swedes left Sweden to find a better life. Chicago was a common destination.
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| European Immigrants - Library of Congress |
Chicago was an important destination for our Swedish immigrant ancestors and Chicago had a large active Swedish community. In 1900, Chicago was the city with the second highest number of Swedes after Stockholm, the capitol of Sweden. Today with a greater Chicagoland population of about 2.6 million, a mere 15,000 claim Swedish ancestry. Most of those are second, third and later generation Swedish-Americans, such as myself. Minnesota, by a hugh margin, now boasts the highest percentage of Americans who claim Swedish ancestry (9.8%).
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| Reading the Chicago published Newspaper Svenska-Amerikanaren - Library of Congress |
The Encyclopedia of Chicago has an interesting section devoted to Swedish Chicago. Check it out?
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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF CHICAGO - SWEDES
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